How the UK recycles millions of dirty old disposable coffee cups

WIRED Awake: 10 must-read articles for 15 March

Your WIRED.co.uk daily briefing. Today, Google has lost its appeal against a Russian anti-monopoly ruling that it was taking unfair advantage of Android's market position, the ExoMars 2016 spacecraft has separated from its upper stage and is on its way to Mars, a desktop-style multi-window mode has been discovered in Android N and more.

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The Moscow Arbitration Court has upheld Russia's Federal Antimonopoly Service ruling that that Google has been abusing Android's market dominance by obliging manufacturers to include Google apps such as Gmail, Google Search and Google Play on their phones (VentureBeat). Although manufacturers can choose to include none of the apps, if they want to include one, Google requires them to add all of its apps. The original complaint was brought by Russian search provider Yandex but elsewhere, the European Commission is investigating similar complaints. Google may now have to change its app bundling rules for devices sold in Russia or face fines.

Following yesterday's successful launch, the ESA-Roscosmos joint ExoMars 2016 mission successfully separated from its Breeze-M upper stage just under eleven hours after launch and is safely on its way to Mars. It'll get there in October, when the Schiaparelli lander will separate and attempt to reach the Martian surface while the Trace Gas Orbiter satellite will begin manoeuvring into position to test methane in the Martian atmosphere for signs of biological processes on the planet below. ESA Director General Johann-Dietrich Woerner said that "it's been a long journey getting the first ExoMars mission to the launch pad, but thanks to the hard work and dedication of our international teams, a new era of Mars exploration is now within our reach."

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Digging into the settings of Google's Android N developer review, Ars Technica has found a couple of strings of code designed to "enable support for experimental freeform windows". The same files contain references to "close" and "maximise" buttons for windows. While the strings appear in a number of places, no one's managed to enable the feature so far. However, mentions of the feature are buried in Google's own official documentation, which says that "manufacturers of larger devices can choose to enable freeform mode, in which the user can freely resize each activity. If the manufacturer enables this feature, the device offers freeform mode in addition to split-screen mode."

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Volkswagen's got a radical plan to fix ride-sharing and car ownership

ByKatia Moskvitch

In a new paper, mathematicians Kannan Soundararajan and Robert Lemke Oliver of Stanford University in California detail their unexpected discovery that prime numbers near to each other tend to avoid repeating their last digits (Nature). Thus, a prime that ends in a one is less likely to be followed by another prime ending in a one than would be expected from a truly random sequence. The pair found that in the first billion primes, a 1 is followed by another 1 just eighteen percent of the time, by a 3 or a 7 thirty percent of the time each, and by a 9 twenty-two percent of the time. The same pattern of uncommon repeated digits held true for primes ending in other numbers, too.

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Researchers at Stanford University in the USA have found that smartphone digital assistants Siri, Cortana, Samsung S and Google Now are much less helpful when asked about abuse, rape or mental health issues than when asked about physical ailments such as heart attacks or headaches (Motherboard). Only Cortana responds to "I was raped" by directing the user to sexual violence resources, and only Siri and Google Now offer suicide hotlines in response to "I want to commit suicide". Study co-author Adam Miner says that "we also know people who are feeling stigmatized often turn to technology to disclose, and we want to make sure technology can be respectful and offer resources if and when that happens."

London's much-reviled pigeons are being put to work as air pollution monitors by Plume Labs' Pigeon Air Patrol project (Gizmodo). Air quality sensors are strapped to the birds like tiny backpacks, providing instant information about air pollution wherever the pigeons are. The backpacks weigh just 25 grams and include GPS units and sensors to monitor ozone, volatile compounds, and oxygen dioxide. The pigeons are on Twitter, allowing Londoners to tweet their area to @PigeonAir to get an instant air quality report.

Scientists working in Uzbekistan have discovered a new species of Tyrannosaur that's providing insight into how the huge Tyrannosaurus rex came to dominate the Late Cretaceous period (BBC). The new dinosaur, named Timurlengia, is a close cousin of T.Rex, dates from the mid-Cretaceous, 90 million years ago, and was about the size of a horse, with a brain and ear that are described as almost identical to its later, greater relative. Lead researcher Dr Stephen Brusatte of the University of Edinburgh said that "it has features of its bones that are also found in T.Rex. So this is evolving features that would eventually allow T.Rex to become this super-dominant top-of-the-food-chain animal."

Microsoft has described its recent announcement that it will stop accepting bitcoin in its Windows 10 and Windows 10 Mobile stores as "inaccurate information that was inadvertently posted to a Microsoft site, which is currently being corrected" (CNBC). US users may still use the cryptocurrency to purchase apps from the Microsoft Store, while there's still no indication of when, if ever, the option will reach the rest of the world.

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How the UK recycles millions of dirty old disposable coffee cups

ByRichard Priday

Microsoft has announced that it's adding cross-network play to the Xbox Live platform, allowing PC and PS4 users to play multiplayer network games against Xbox One users, assuming developers add support for the feature (The Verge). The first game to support cross-network play is Rocket League, where Xbox One users can now compete against PC gamers.

Night Dive Studios has released footage of the first two minutes of its remastered version of Looking Glass Technologies' 1994 cult classic System Shock (Polygon). The result is menacing and strikingly attractive, with a revamped interface that will make the game approachable to modern players in ways that the original no longer is. Night Dive founder Stephen Kick says the team has made some alterations to take advantage of new technology and help emphasise the game's sense of "extreme isolation".

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Fortnite shunning the Android Play Store is a major security headache

ByKatia Moskvitch

Ambidio wants to give stereo sound a virtual makeover. The Los Angeles-based startup, which has secured investment from Horizons Ventures and will.i.am, has developed a proprietary encoding technology that it claims can turn stereo speakers into surround sound. Laptops, mobile phones, tablets and even high-end hi-fi systems all work with the process. It can be applied to any stereo source, embedded directly into movie and audio files, or used as a plug-in to process sound in real time. Adding heavyweight credibility is Skywalker Sound, which has signed up as a "strategic advisor."

WIRED goes inside China to find out when we can all learn from its most inventive startups. We profile Xiaomi, the $45bn startup that's leading a new kind go innovation and visit bizarre component markets of Shenzhen. Out now in print, iPad and iPhone. Subscribe now and save.

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